The W1 Chronicles: Suds

Nota / Sakru Na, Kah / Pahabilin / Teka, teka, teka...

This post is a second entry to a two-part series (choz!). I recommend you read this post first, which is also found immediately after this entry. Yun na! Tse!

Let's continue the story, mi amigas, shall we?

After first meeting W1 we continued to keep in touch. We sensed that we had a stronger relationship and so the communication intensified, and the feelings as well.

My longing for him was serious. I started making plans to move to Cebu to be with him, and he knew this fully well and was supportive of it.

I finished the research project I was working on and soon after I packed my stuff and left Davao for Cebu. It was the end of the summer of 2002, I was beaming with the promise of being with the person I loved.

I lived with my friend for a few weeks and started looking for a job, while at the same time trying to get in touch with W1. I could not reach him for some reason that escapes me now. I tried calling his house but supposedly he was out of town for a week for his grandmother's funeral.

Anyway, I waited. And waited. At some point I stopped trying to get in touch coz I knew that he would be the one to call me when he was available.

Also, I rationalized that if he was really into the relationship, he'd find ways to contact me coz he knew fully well that I already moved to Cebu for him.

Bastard did not call and he remained unavailable.

I even sent a number of emails to tell him that I was already in Cebu. I even emailed him my mobile number, just in case he lost it. My letters went unanswered.

Whenever I wandered around Cebu I was constantly searching the faces of the crowd, hoping that I would somehow stumble into him. I was certain that we'd find each other.

But apparently I could not find someone who's hiding from me, di ba? This is a classic tale of naglaho nang parang bula.

I spent my days in Cebu making sense of what happened to W1 and me. I filled pages and pages of my journal, pouring out my frustration and disappointment. I'd sit for hours in a coffee shop writing. (Note to self: look for that journal in a baul in Manille.)

It did not help that my friend went home to Surigao and I had no one to talk to. I busied my self with my job-hunting, but that also went unsuccessful.

Eventually I divided my time between Surigao and Cebu. I remember filling my days with moping and writing long journal entries that I realized only sucked me deeper into the vortex of loneliness.

For months, I would whisper "I love you" before I sleep coz that's what we said to each other every night.

For the first time I realized what it meant to be broken-hearted and that you actually feel it in your gut. I never thought it was that literal.

I had many questions in my head, mainly if he felt the same way for our relationship as I did. I wondered if all that was just an illusion he created, I don't know, for lack of better things to do perhaps. I questioned his honesty and loyalty and ultimately if he loved me at all, which he said he did.

I dissected the questions over and over again for many months. Often I'd just find my self staring into empty space, playing the same questions in my head that I've thought about nearly every idle moment I had.

My friend told me that I needed proper closure, a concept I could not grasp at that time. I simply wanted answers and the more I pore over them the more annoyed I got at my self for being such a wimp.

Six months after moving to Cebu, I received an SMS from W1. He apologized for disappearing just like that. He confessed that his ex and him got back together and he did not have the courage to tell me about it. Oh, classic.

By then I had gotten so tired of thinking about us his explanation did not matter anymore. I just wanted it to end. I don't know what "it" means really. But I just remember feeling angry at him and at my self for being that stupid.

One more thing... during that exchange of SMSes the bastard even had the gall to ask for my photo. Someone please help me make sense of this request coz until now that is still the biggest conundrum of the whole affair.

So I sent him this picture...

Meowwww...

I could not remember anymore exactly how I recovered. What I'm certain about is that it took me nearly nine months to get over a three-month long-distance relationship. Gosh, if that sounds pathetic, it truly was.

It helped that I eventually moved back to Davao after seven months of being jobless. I felt that I was defeated big time on all fronts. Thankfully, my former organization took me back and that's how I lived in Davao for another three years.

In 2004, W1 found me on Friendster and he sent me a crappy message that he had been "looking around" for me "all over the place" for quite some time now. The bayot rolls his eyes.